10/29/2026
A Halloween-season reminder: the scariest IT costs are the ones that aren't in the budget.
When leaders compare in-house IT to a managed partner, these are the line items most often left out:
- Coverage when your IT person is on vacation, out sick, or leaves
- Security tools and monitoring
- Ongoing training and certifications
- Leadership time to set IT strategy, not just fix tickets
And the one nobody budgets for: recovering from a security incident. Downtime, cleanup and lost focus add up fast, and the gaps above are often where those incidents start.
None of these show up in a single salary number, but all of them show up eventually. Our calculator includes the planned ones, so the comparison is apples to apples.
https://bit.ly/4slL012